June's long-lighted days

Portrait of Rudyard Kipling by John Collier

From Rudyard Kipling's ‘Roman Centurion’s Song’, in which the Centurion, after 40 years’ service in Britain, pleads not to be sent back to Rome:

For me, this land, that sea, these airs,

those folk and fields suffice.

What purple Southern pomp can match our

changeful Northern skies,

Black with December snows unshed or

pearled with August haze--

The clanging arch of steel grey March,

or June's long-lighted days?

Hear the whole poem read by Kipling himself--in an animated video--HERE.